


gem touch

by yarnwithpictures



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: pearlmethyst - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 03:08:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8384887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yarnwithpictures/pseuds/yarnwithpictures
Summary: Amethyst tells a story with some visual aids and Pearl and Garnet teach the rest about gem stuff





	

The beast screeched.  This sound made Pearl’s hair stand on end, especially since Amethyst was the one it was directed at.  

The corrupted gem was much bigger than it had been a few minutes ago, something Garnet had not mentioned before going on an important mission of her own.  Its sudden stature, and the fact that it was now flailing in a rage because of an especially painful cut from Amethyst’s whip, made this mission seem like it would have been easier if Garnet had tagged along.  

“Hey!” she shouted, landing a hit with her spear and then leaping away, “Over here, you big- nngh!”  She punctuated the end of her sentence by slicing off the end of one of the gem’s reaching tentacles.  It screeched again, and she felt it crackle where the base of her skull would be, if she had one.  

Amethyst sprinted around one of its bulbous feet and cupped the side of her mouth with her hand.  “What do we do?” she hollered.  

Pearl batted another limb away and shouted back, “We need Opal!”

She saw Amethyst’s grin glint even from this distance, “You got it, P!”

Amethyst pulled back and brought the handle of her whip down, hooking the flail at the end on one of the rafters high above and tugging to see if it held.  She planted one of her feet on the far wall and pushed off, leaping over the corrupted gem entirely.  

Pearl let her gem glow as she watched Amethyst fall towards her.  She stomped on a tentacle and held it down before reaching up for Amethyst’s outstretched hand.  

Their fingers were feet apart when Amethyst stopped almost unnaturally in mid-air.  Her hair kept going and fell about her surprised face as she was pulled back the way she came by one of the gem’s tentacles wrapped tightly around her leg.  Pearl swiped for her, but she was too far away.

“AAAH-!”  Amethyst’s scream was cut short with an abrupt  _ thunk _ when the beast smacked her hard against the high ceiling.  

Pearl watched helplessly as Amethyst went limp, her arms dangling with her hair as the gem held her upside down.  

“Amethy-” Pearl gasped.  The tentacle she had been holding down with her foot had escaped and now had her in a tight coil.  Her arms were trapped at her sides, and her feet left the ground kicking and swinging.  

The beast held her a little higher than it was holding Amethyst, who was still unconscious.  Or maybe she was just dazed.  Pearl hoped it was the latter, because at this point, Amethyst was the only one with her arms free.  

“Amethyst!”  Pearl kneed the bottom loop of the tentacle holding her, and growled when it tightened.  “Amethyst,  _ wake up!” _

The creature made an unnerving noise and moved a group of its limbs simultaneously; about five of them were now pointed at Pearl- they seemed to have gotten sharper going by the light glancing off of them- and one, sharpened too, was aimed at Amethyst’s chest.  

“AMETHYST!” Pearl thrashed harder than ever, making the limbs pointed at her edge closer.  She was panting now, more out of panic than exertion.  

The limb pointed at Amethyst began to twist up, like it was charging.  Two eyes opened at the top of the shapeless mass that Pearl supposed was its head, and two beams of light flitted into the air from its pupils.  They swirled around the room in a pattern before focusing on the center of Amethyst’s gem.  

Pearl’s panic rose immensely, and she started trying to wrench her arms out of their entrapment when four more eyes opened and repeated the process that the first two had gone through.  

The limbs pointed at Pearl edged even closer as she struggled.  They were inches away when she finally managed to get her right arm out.  She yelped and squinted through the pain that the deep gash in her upper arm was sending to her head in waves.  

Pearl ignored the feeling of her form about to give and pulled a spear out of her gem just as the lights honed in on Amethyst’s, making it glint.  

She aimed a trembling spear at the tentacle holding Amethyst up, trying to breathe to steady her shot.  The tentacle trapping her left arm to her side was making this hard, but she focused on her spear.  Everything but her target went out of focus.  The limb aimed at Amethyst’s gem twisted up some more as Pearl charged an energy shot.  

It all happened at once: the limb endangering Amethyst finished twisting and shot towards her.  Pearl fired.  Amethyst fell downward, the twisted limb scraping her toes, piercing the air where her gem had been a second before.  

The creature screeched again.  Pearl had severed another one of its tentacles with her energy shot, the one wrapped around Amethyst's leg.  

She saw Amethyst hit the floor, saw her move a small bit, but she couldn’t hear anymore.  A loud, high-pitched ringing was all she could discern, besides the coil around her loosening and letting her go.  

Pearl sighed as she fell through the air.  She heard her spear hit the ground before her, and then everything went dark.  

~

“And  _ then!”  _ Amethyst jumped in front of Pearl’s now blank projection, making their audience jump.  “The gem swayed like this-” she rocked from foot to foot, making herself seem incredibly unsteady, but also like she was re-enacting a scene from Godzilla.  “I was just coming to, and I saw Pearl’s gem on the ground like, right under its foot!”

Steven gasped, even though he’d heard this story about three times before; he had asked Amethyst to tell it the second and third time, and she had been happy to.  This was the fourth telling, and the first that Pearl was present for.  Peridot seemed to be tired of it now, but she hadn’t complained yet.  

“So, I ran as low and fast as I could, and I scooped her up right before it stomped on the place she was a second before!”

Steven applauded, and Peridot sighed as Pearl’s projection made an odd sound and turned a darker shade of blue.  Amethyst, Peridot, and Steven all noticed this and turned to look at the blank sphere of color before it retreated into Pearl’s gem.  

“What was that?” Steven asked.  Amethyst tipped her head and cocked an eyebrow to ask the same question.  Peridot leaned back to prop herself up onto her elbows and sighed again.  

“Oh, that was Amethyst telling me that she was okay.”

Amethyst made a perplexed noise at the back of her throat, and Steven leaned forward, waiting for an explanation.  

“She touched her gem to mine,” Pearl pointed at Amethyst’s chest, and then to her forehead as she spoke.  

“You  _ felt _ that?” Amethyst said in disbelief.  Steven’s face lit up at the same time, and Peridot shot into a sitting position, her eyes wide.  

Pearl simply nodded, “Mm-hm.”  

“You touched gems?!” everyone turned to look at Peridot, who was blushing.  

Pearl looked sideways, trying to find something wrong with the situation.  “Yeuhs?”

Peridot looked confused now on top of her embarrassment, “But that’s…” Peridot looked at Steven, who was listening raptly to every word the Gems were saying, and held her hand up next to her face in an attempt to keep Steven from hearing her whisper, “indecent.”

Pearl blinked and raised her eyebrows at her in surprise, and Amethyst turned a darker shade of violet.  A second later, Pearl laughed.  Amethyst and Peridot continued to appear confused, but Steven started to giggle.  

“No, it’s not!,” Pearl’s laughter remained in the form of a smile.  

“Buh-” Peridot began, but Pearl interrupted.  

“The connotation must have changed since I left Homeworld.  It’s more  _ intimate  _ than ‘indecent.”

“What d’you mean?” Steven asked.  

“It’s comparable to… uhh… hm.”  Pearl squinted and touched her chin in thought.  

“Holdin’ hands.”  Everyone turned to look up at Garnet, who had approached unnoticed until now.  “Or huggin’, I guess.  There isn’t an exact comparison for humans,” she added, adjusting her shades.  

“Yes!  Yes,” Pearl turned back to Steven, “It could also be used as a basic form of communication, to pass simple messages on.  If your gem were in an inconspicuous place, you could do it without anyone noticing.”

“Like on your hands?” Peridot seemed more interested than appalled now.  Garnet smiled.

“Yes, like that,” Pearl said.  

“But what  _ kind  _ of hand-hold?” Steven brought the conversation backwards.  

“What?” Pearl was unsteadied by his question; she’d already filed that part of the conversation away.  

Amethyst jumped in to explain, “He means like- there’s different kinds,” she took Steven’s hand, holding four of his fingers between her thumb and forefinger, “This is less serious than,” she laced their fingers together, “this.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“I hang around more humans than you, P.”

Pearl hummed with a slightly irritated crease at the corner of her mouth, “True.”

Garnet bent at the waist to point at their interlocked fingers, “It’s more like that one.”  

Steven chortled, and Peridot looked at his and Amethyst’s hands with a crease in her brow.  “So…  _ that _ is ‘touching gems’ to humans?”

“Humans can’t share thoughts through touch,” Garnet interjected, “So not really, but the gesture is the same.”  

“Oh.” Peridot squinted at the floor.  Steven recognized the face she made when trying to understand human things.  She always put a lot of effort into doing so.  

“Why’d you think it was indecent, Peri?” Amethyst sat down between Pearl and Steven.  

The question made Peridot frown.  “Because… on Homeworld- even touching another gem on  _ accident _ is treated like an offence- I mean, it’s rude.”

Pearl looked sad for a second, but she covered it up quickly enough that only Amethyst noticed.  

“You can’t hug your friends there?” Steven asked in disbelief.  

“You can’t really… make friends.  It’s discouraged.”

“Well, we have things to do,” Pearl clapped loudly and stood, stopping the conversation short.  “Come on.”  She turned and walked away, going quickly down the stairs and heading for the warp pad.  

Steven was suddenly very worried, but understood that Pearl didn’t want to talk about Homeworld anymore.  He watched Amethyst follow Garnet down to the ground floor and stood up with Peridot.  She looked uncomfortable.  

“Hey,” he held out his arms.  Peridot gave him a small smile and accepted the offer to hug.  

“You know I’m your friend, right?” he asked tentatively.  

“Yeah.” she hugged him a little tighter and then let him go.  Thanks, Steven.”  

**Author's Note:**

> This makes more sense if you don't think about it too much; don't take this as an 'official theory' or whatever- it's just for fun.


End file.
